It is very desirous in obtaining sample cores from bore holes to know the direction that certain parts of the core bear with relation to the surface of the ground where the bore has been made, and in order to accomplish this, complicated mechanism has heretofore been used such, for instance, as a compass in the apparatus and photography. Disadvantages are had in this kind of mechanism because the drilling operation sets up vibrations in the coring equipment and drilling fluid that would blur the photograph causing it to be necessary to halt completely the drilling and fluid pumping operations and allow these vibrations to subside, which consumes time, in order that a clear photograph may be obtained. Further, with the use of a compass, the apparatus and the ground material must be non-magnetic so that the compass will not be affected, as for instance, in the device shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,450,216 dated June 17, 1969. In addition, there exists in the art core taking apparatus where the core barrel is attached to the bottom end of the drill string, being isolated from the rotation by bearings, friction between the core and core barrel providing the only force holding the core barrel from rotating, all as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,004,614. If, however, the core should break, the core barrel will rotate, and all orientation will be lost. In fact, many prior core sampling apparatus rely on the integrity of the core.